Santa Ana High School Chemistry teacher speaks out again about dangerous overcrowding

Santa Ana High School chemistry teacher Gary Reynolds spoke again to the SAUSD school board last week, on Oct. 13, about the response of Asso. Superintendent Juan Lopez to the accusation of dangerous overcrowding of science labs.

Reynolds waited four hours to speak, at around 10 pm, when most folks had gone home, but his comments were recorded and put up on YouTube. (You can see the video above).

That is board member Rob Richardson in the background trying to get Reynolds to stop as he was concluding.

O.C. Register reporter Fermin Leal picked up on Reynold’s earlier talks about this issue, at previous school board meetings, and apparently contacted Juan Lopez, who gave the same response to Leal that Reynolds later called irrational, “If it’s not illegal, it must be safe.”

Here are a few excerpts from Leal’s article:

Reynolds said the state’s Science Safety Handbook, developed by the state Department of Education, limits science classes to the designed capacity of classrooms. He said capacity of chemistry classes is 32 students because each room was designed with four lab stations, each with eight seats. Currently, chemistry classes have 36 students; an extra chair was added at the end of each station to absorb the additional students.

“The over-enrolling of our classes is in violation of state safety guidelines,” Reynolds told the school board during a regular meeting last month. “This exposes the district to a charge of negligence for the safety of our students.”

Shouldn’t student safety be a priority at the SAUSD? Click here to contact the school district’s public information officer.